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Suicide by Condescension?

On August 4, the Times of London ran two articles that, taken together, inadvertently illustrated precisely what Britain is up against these days.

In one article, Paul Morgan-Bentley, identified as the Times's head of investigations, reported that the Home Office had “received more than 3,800 reports of forced marriages or victims being at risk of forced marriage in the past three years,” with “[h]undreds of the victims” being children, the youngest of whom was four years old. (Yes, four years old.) Yet during this period, according to Morgan-Bentley's investigation, “fewer than 80 suspects had been charged.” Even though forced marriage became illegal in the UK in 2014, “only three cases have resulted in convictions.” Morgan-Bentley quoted Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of a support group for victims of forced marriage: “We’ve got a number of professionals who are turning a blind eye. They don’t want to rock the multicultural boat.”

Add these new revelations to the already well documented unwillingness of British authorities, over a period of decades, to do anything about Muslim rape gangs, and you have plenty of fodder for self-righteous newspaper columns exploding with outrage at do-nothing government officials. But at whom did Times columnist Janice Turner vent her spleen on August 4? Why, at none other than Tommy Robinson, of course, who – at the expense of his own health, sanity, financial well-being, and personal freedom – has been drawing attention for his entire adult life to such Islam-engendered social calamities, which have otherwise been almost entirely ignored.

To read Turner, however, you would believe that Tommy himself is the problem. Under the headline “We ignore Tommy Robinson at our peril,” Turner depicted him as a “violent” creep, a “football thug and mortgage fraudster” (years ago, after combing through his finances, the authorities convicted him of lending money to his brother-in-law, because they couldn't find a more serious infraction to get him on) who is “too thick or arrogant to grasp contempt laws” and hence “risked derailing complex trials and denying alleged rape victims justice.” As it happens, it was Tommy, not Turner, who played a major role in bringing such rapes to light in the first place.

“Cast him out to the nutty fringes, no-platform and ignore him, keep his views off our airwaves, cut the publicity oxygen pipe and hope he chokes,” wrote Turner. “Except I don’t think we have this choice.” It's not just Tommy whom Turner wants to exclude from the public square. She feels the same way about Raheem Kassan, one of the exceedingly few Muslim-born people in Britain who now speak up boldly to criticize that religion. “[M]any have argued that the BBC should not host Kassam at all,” Turner writes, using one of those transparent journalistic formulas, the point plainly being that she doesn't think the BBC should host Kassam. To give Kassam a platform, she maintains, is “to legitimise hatred, normalise fascism and draw Islamophobia into the mainstream.”

Perhaps this is the point at which it should be mentioned that Turner is the Julie Chen of the British media – she's married to Ben Preston, executive editor of the Sunday Times.

“Robinson’s supporters,” Turner goes on to say, “do not care...that their diamond geezer hero is really called Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and ran a sunbed shop.” In other words, a tanning studio. Her point being what? Apparently that such an obvious low-rent type has no right to a national audience for his opinions about anything. This is British class hatred at its purest.

“He could throttle an imam on Luton high street,” Turner complains about Tommy, “and his YouTube hits – already between 400,000 and a million views per video – would only soar, his martyr myth burn brighter.” Paging George Orwell: Tommy is not throttling imams. Nobody in the UK is throttling imams. Imams across Britain, on the other hand, are calling for the murder of infidels and the rape of infidel children. But such things are too vulgar for Turner to mention. Let the imams continue to rage against Britain, to endorse jihad, to celebrate violence; Turner will continue depicting them as victims and portraying Tommy & co. as the bad guys.

Turner even goes so low as to mock the video, posted online, of Tommy returning home from prison the other day and embracing his sobbing kids. “A perfect reality TV 'reveal,'” she sneers. Does she deny the reality of his imprisonment? Or of his children's suffering? What is her point except to flaunt her Times privilege, her awareness that she, for one, will never be jailed for reporting from outside a courthouse? Could anything be sicker?

She also derides Tommy's statement to reporters on his release from prison: “I’ve got a lot to say, but nothing to you.” This is a man who, from the beginning of his career as an activist, has been pigeonholed by British journalists as a right-wing racist – even though he probably has more black friends than any ten of them put together.

Turner's comment on his refusal to talk to reporters: “Why expose himself to tricky questions when there is more political capital in a sad, weary, shaken head. Poor Tommy, so traduced and misunderstood.” Tricky questions? None of these posh nitwits could come up with a question that would trick Tommy if their lives depended on it. They insist on representing Tommy as some know-nothing, when in fact he understands Islam better than any of them.

Note to Turner: this man lost forty pounds in the slammer, you craven harpy, while, according to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, he was incarcerated inappropriately. It was obviously a hit job. He was lucky to get out with his life. He was fighting for your country. What have you done to fight for it? Have you no decency?

There's more to Turner's column, but you get the point. The bottom line is that this woman personifies a sickness of the mind and soul that seems to pervade the British establishment. Why, a naive observer might ask, is she so intent on vilifying Tommy rather than those Muslim rapists whose “complex” trial she pretends to care so much about? Where was she, indeed, when all those rapes were going on? Where was she, this proud journalist, when Tommy was essentially doing her job for her, drawing public attention to reprehensible developments in his hometown that the “respectable” media chose for years to ignore? Where was she when Tommy was railroaded in Leeds Crown Court – an action to which the entire mainstream British media gave a thumbs-up, only to see England's top judge give it a thumbs-down?

Not-so-fun fact: when first posted online, Turner's article described Tommy as a “girlfriend beating” thug. After Tommy threatened a libel suit, the Times took that line out pronto. But it didn't append, as proper journalistic practice would dictate, an editorial note acknowledging the removal. No, what happened is that the executive editor's wife let herself get carried away a bit too much by the excitement of tearing down a hero – imagine what a hit she would be at the next Knightsbridge cocktail party for having accused Tommy Robinson of beating his girlfriend! – and the Times protected her.

This is how it works in the upper echelons of British culture and society. And this, if these shallow creatures don't start to treat Tommy Robinson and his supporters with the respect they deserve, and start treating the threat of Islam with the seriousness it deserves, is how one of the greatest nations in human history will end up going down the tubes.